Congenital Heart Disease Echocardiography

European Association of Echocardiography Accreditation

The accreditation in CHD is a joint initiative of the Association for European Paediatric Cardiology (AEPC), the EAE and the ESC Working Group on Grown-up Congenital Heart Disease

Aims | Registration | Process | Documents to submit | Get ready

Aims

What would you benefit from getting the EAE Accreditation in CHD ?

The goal of accreditation is to set a European standard for competence and excellence in congenital echocardiography.
Accreditation in CHD should bring credibility and professional legitimacy to an individual by demonstrating his/her competency getting this certification.
The accreditation process will identify qualified practitioners of paediatric and congenital echocardiography and should enhance their professional image.
European Accreditation is designed to test the competency of an individual to be able to perform, interpret and report routine congenital echocardiographic studies unsupervised.
The accreditation in CHD is not a compulsory or regulatory certificate of competence or excellence. Individuals' rights to report and sign clinical studies in individual countries remain to be defined by National laws and regulations.

Registration

Next exam session is taking place on:

10 December 2010 from 15:00 to 20:00 during EUROECHO Congress (Copenhagen - DK).
Online registration will be available by mid-September 2010

Candidates must hand the 'Supervisor Enrolment and Statement of Supervisor Form' the day of the exam to the registration desk.
NEW! Candidate looking for a supervisor can refer to the list of successful candidates
Download the enrolment form Enrolment form must be stapled

Accreditation Fees (in Euros)

	Early Fees	Onsite Fees
Standard	€200	€250
*EAE/AEPC Members**	€170	€200
Resit	€100	€150

* AEPC members: please contact accreditationEAE@escardio.org to proceed to registration.

*** Please note that so as to respect exam room capacity, registrations are taken under the basis of first come first served. We encourage pre-registration to guarantee a place.

Cancellation policy:
In the event that a participant wishes to cancel his/her registration to the Accreditation exam, a written confirmation to accreditationEAE@escardio.org
is required, up to 2 weeks prior the exam. A refund of fees will be made. After this deadline, the candidate will be charged with a penalty of 50% of the accreditation fee and be refunded of the difference. In case of unforeseen circumstances (such as death in the family, on-call at the hospital, accident of the candidate...), a proof document will be required and the candidate will be refunded with the entire registration fee".

For any information, please contact us here

Requirements

The accreditation includes two parts:

Theoretical part: written exam. Candidates will have to pass this first section successfully before going to the second part.
Practical part: log book section. Candidates must submit a logbook of 250 clinical cases performed by him/her.

To obtain accreditation, candidates must pass both the written and the log book parts of the assessment.

Re-accreditation:
As echocardiography skills can only be maintained by continued education and practical involvement, accreditation will be granted for a period of five years. After this time, to maintain accreditation, candidates will have to start a re-accreditation process demonstrating their continued practice and learning in this field.
Details will be available soon under the Re-accreditation section.

Process

The CHD Accreditation process is run in two parts:

STEP 1: A written exam held once a year: in December during the EUROECHO Congress.

This exam is a Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ, single best answer out of 5 possible choices) divided into two sections:

Reporting (50 questions related to CHD cases on screen displayed echoes - around 110 minutes). This timing might vary according to the number of videos used.
Theory (100 questions - 145 minutes).

The exam is in English, a glossary is provided.

More details and examples can be found for the Reporting and Theory parts.

The duration of the written examination is 5 hours including a 30-45 minutes break upon completion of reporting section. However, this schedule can be subject to on-site modification.

To be successful, a candidate must pass both sections of the written exam (reporting and theory) at the same time. The passing scores for each section are discussed and established after each exam within the CHD Sub-Committee, based on statistical performance of individual questions and on the average level of scores at the respective exam.

Usually the cut-off scores for passing are as follow:

Minimum 32 correct answers out of 50 for the reporting section
Minimum 65 correct answers out of 100 for the theory section.

On the day of the written exam:

Before the exam:

The candidate is required to come to the Accreditation registration desk at least 30 minutes before the start of the exam in order to sign the registration sheet.
In addition, the candidate is requested to bring and present an ID document to confirm his/her identity.
The candidate is kindly asked to bring his/her calculator; the use of calculator in mobile phone is forbidden.
The candidate will be allowed to enter the exam room only 5 minutes before the examination.

A candidate number will be given to the candidate on the day of the written exam. This number as well as the candidates' name and surname will be indicated on the mark sheet where answers to MCQ must be reported.

During the exam:

A 45 minutes break will be provided between the reporting and the theory sections (i.e 110 minutes after the start of the exam).
If a candidate leaves the room before the end of the exam, he/she will have to return his/her marking sheet to the assessors and will not be authorised the re-enter the room nor get access to his/her marking sheet.
If a candidate completes the exam before the end of the session, he/she is authorised to leave the room.
Once finished, the candidate is required to hand his/her marking sheet and sign the handover document.

Results of the written exam are sent by email within two months after the exam.

STEP 2: A Practical assessment to be completed within 12 months of passing the written examination. Candidates have to submit a log book consisting of 250 CHD anonymised studies performed by themselves within a 24 months period (from 1 year before until 1 year after passing the written exam).

Failure will oblige the candidate to start the whole process from the beginning.
Candidate may raise an appeal to the EAE Accreditation Committee. The appeal procedure for re-evaluation of a logbook is charged 50 Euros.
To open an appeal procedure, please follow instructions indicated in the results letter.

The log book and also submitted reports should reflect the normal case-load of a general paediatric and congenital echocardiography department and should include cases of:

·       Ventricular function assessment.
·       Valvular heart disease.
·       Septation defects (VSD, ASD, AVSD)
·       Right heart obstructions (tetralogy of Fallot, pulmonary atresia)
·       Left heart obstructions (coarctation, hypoplastic left heart…)
·       Atrioventricular discordance (double discordance,…)
·       Arterioventricular discordance (transposition, double outlet ventricles)
·       Situs anomalies, isomerism
·       Postoperative congenital heart disease.
·       Suspected endocarditis.
·       Cardiomyopathies.
·       Coronary anomalies (Kawasaki disease, ALCAPA…)
·      No more than 1/3 of the studies should be completely normal.

Candidates registering from 2010 onwards
Candidates have to submit:

250 cases summary sheet
The congenital echo assessors reserves the right to request anonymised reports and video images relating to any of the summary sheet cases.
10 consecutives completed forms known as 'Direct Observation of Practice' (DOPs) forms.
DOPs include a score from another qualified observer at the candidate’s own institution. This must be signed and completed at the time of the echocardiographic study.
Qualified observer can be chosen among attending paedriatric cardiologist/adult congenital cardiologist or any staff member holding EAE Congenital accreditation or national accreditation (if it is the case, a certificate must accompany the DOPs).
The DOPs summary sheet
Once all 10 DOPs have been completed, the summary sheet should be completed and signed by the designated supervisor. The summary sheet should include all DOPs assessments.
If there have been any score of 1-3 (unsatisfactory) then it is expected that a statement from the designated supervisor regarding action taken and objective evidence of improvement in subsequent assessments.

The congenital echo assessors reserves the right to request anonymised reports and video images relating to the examinations scored for DOPs.

Candidates who registered prior to the introduction of DOPs (December 2009 exam candidates) have the option:

- to use the DOPs system

- to complete their accreditation under the previous system (see below)

Documents to submit with the log book (prior to DOPs):
Summary sheet
Letter from a supervisor testifying that the studies were performed and reported by the candidate. Suggested layout .

All log books must be sent to the EAE Accreditation office*:

The European Hearth House
2035 Route des Colles
Les Templiers - BP 179
06903 Sophia Antipolis - France

*It is the candidate responsibility to send his log book by regular mail or express mail. EAE will not take in charge the cost engaged by the candidate and decline all responsibility in case of lost of the documents.
As a security, candidates should keep a copy of their log book.

Results of the practical assessment are sent by email within 6 months after submitting the log book.

How to prepare for the exam?

To increase your chance of success to the written exam, you may prepare yourself:

Suggested reading list
Going on the EAE Educational area.

This section holds information on education-related areas such as:

Key Reference Library: articles that have been judged as fundamental documents to guide medical practice in the field of echocardiography.
Educational Resources (Slides)
Educational and preparatory courses: courses organised by or in collaboration with the EAE
Echo Hall of Fame: interview with distinguished echocardiographers
Webcasts - please note that some resources are exclusibely restriced to EAE members ans as such a login to My ESC is required.

syllabus

Frequently asked questions:

eae-chd-accred-faq.pdf

Questionnaires examples:

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